


And The Boy Didn't Have a Clue

by AstridContraMundum



Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: M/M, crackfic, unconscious pining and complete obliviousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-01
Updated: 2020-04-01
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:20:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23426878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AstridContraMundum/pseuds/AstridContraMundum
Summary: Tony wasn’t sure what brought him here Friday night after Friday night.God only knew there were other places he could be.
Relationships: Anthony Donn/Endeavour Morse
Comments: 15
Kudos: 38





	And The Boy Didn't Have a Clue

**Author's Note:**

> I am calling this a crack fic because I know they did not have these sorts of "golf cart escort services" (or the service frats that run them) in Oxford... but once I had the image of Morse tearing around in one of those carts instead of the Jag, I just couldn't shake it! :o) 
> 
> So the setting of the fic is a joke, (I know it sounds more like an American college than Oxford) but the pining is real. <3
> 
> Happy April Fool's Day, such as it is!

Tony wasn’t sure what brought him here Friday night after Friday night.

God only knew there were other places he could be.

But, somehow, he always found himself back here, on escort duty, bounding along in the ramshackle golf cart, bouncing over cobblestone and meandering though trails of oak and pine, rocking about in the passenger seat with Pagan at the wheel.

It was Tony’s father who had insisted that he join his old service frat. Noblesse oblige and “those to whom much is given much is expected” and so on and all the rest ...

How tiresome his father was, really.

But still, it needn’t be _so_ very terrible. Tony was required to volunteer for the fraternity’s escort service only once per term. So there was no _real_ reason why he should have signed his name in every Friday slot, alongside of E. Morse’s. 

But yet, here he was.

Perhaps it was that he felt a bit sorry for Pagan. Because God only knew Tony had better places to be.

But Pagan, he suspected, did not.

He was quiet, Pagan. So quiet that no one even knew his name, beyond that elusive E. He held himself with the air of a natural aristocrat, quite apart, ever aloof, even disdainful at times—which was really quite surprising considering he was merely a scholarship boy whom no one had ever even _heard_ of before.

His passion for playing his records—opera, if you could believe it— at full volume, late into the night, certainly didn’t endear him to the other students, either.

Over the course of that first term, however, Tony came to learn that Pagan’s reticence wasn’t born out of arrogance—as the cutting light in his sharp blue eyes might attest—but rather out of an awkwardness that was akin to dreaminess. He was like a king in a castle, musing away the hours, trusting to the guard left on duty to man the gates, keeping any who might seek to trespass on his domain at arm’s length, at a safe distance.

He was certainly an interesting bundle of contradictions—not quite like anyone Tony had ever met before—and riding alongside of him every Friday night gave him ample time to try to puzzle him out.

Not to mention ample time to appreciate his profile, with its aquiline nose, stubborn jaw and austere cheekbones that might have all been carved out of marble, if not for the honey-gold cast of color to his face, strewn with a charming spattering of freckles, light as fairy dust.

Ample time, too, to watch the way in which his wavy hair—hair that seemed to change color with the shadow and the sun from auburn to bright red-gold—moved and billowed with the wind whenever he turned a sharp corner or hit the gas.

And as insulated and isolated as Pagan was, he had a funny sort of way of always finding himself in the center of things. They saw it all, in the course of a night. It was well worth it, missing some of the more tempting parties, to be there in the thick of it with him, to exchange knowing smiles with him at the end of some lark.

Even now, Alexander Reece was standing at the kerb in front of Hollings Hall, looking daggers at them, arms folded, tapping his foot.

“I need a lift over to the library,” he snapped, as Pagan pulled up cautiously alongside him, mindful not to let the tires be caught in the mud that lay under the oak trees, lest they get stuck in the stretch of damp ground that never saw the sun. 

Pagan considered him. 

“The escort service is meant for those who are intoxicated or who otherwise feel concerned about their safety,” he said, at last.

Tony knew all too well that, in Pagan’s mind, that was code for girls. The golf cart, he saw as primarily the envoy of damsels in distress. Men like Reese could bloody well hoof it, as far as he was concerned.

And, sure enough....

“Why don’t you simply bike over?” Pagan asked.

It was the wrong thing to say: Reece grew even more waspish at that. 

“If you must know, someone has punctured my tires,” he said. “Susan, most likely,” he muttered darkly.

Tony laughed. “ _Susan?_ Susan _Fallon?”_

“She saw me the other night. At a party with Miranda. You know what they say. _Hell hath no fury._ ”

Tony looked to Pagan, and when their eyes met, something melted in Tony’s chest—it was there, in Pagan’s eyes, just as Tony had known it would be—a telltale trace of mirth glittering behind ice summer blue. 

Even someone as socially inept as Pagan recognized that Reece's theory could only be pure balderdash. The ridiculous byproduct of his overblown ego and wildly wishful thinking.

But Pagan shrugged, nevertheless, relenting, and Reece scrambled into the backseat.

“Quickly,” he commanded. “I'm in rather a hurry.” 

Tony quirked a smile.

Reece would have done better to have merely said, “Thank you, old boy.”

Because Pagan started up the engine with a delectable languorousness, his perfectly-molded hand, with its fine bones that might have been carved by Praxiteles, pulling the gear into drive as if it were a heavy weight under his palm, proceeding down the path at a rate that was actually quite reasonable by anyone else's standards, but far more leisured than the manner in which Pagan usually tore about in the thing. 

“Can’t you go any faster?” Reece snapped. “Usually you seem to be a danger to the public in this infernal contraption.”

Pagan’s big eyes strayed to the rear view mirror, and then he shrugged, and increased the pressure of his foot on the gas. When they finally reached the Tillford Library, it was without a word of thanks that Reece scrambled out of the cart and strode angrily up the wide stone steps. 

They were just pulling away to go, when, down the pavement a bit, they passed by Jerome Hogg, who was standing with four heavy rucksacks, watching them expectantly. 

“I say there, Morse. Any chance of a lift? It seems a rather heavy burden has befallen to me,” he said. 

Pagan said nothing. It was clear he was mulling it over. Hogg, at least, had sense enough to keep quiet, not try to press his luck. 

“All right,” Pagan said at last. 

“Where are you going?” Tony asked, as Hogg loaded his bags into the back. 

“My rooms,” he said tersely.

Pagan nodded once and then waited for Hogg to settle himself next to all of his baggage before proceeding on their way. 

Pagan seemed happy enough again, tearing about, sending the golf cart bouncing and creaking in a way that was actually quite alarming. 

After a while, he asked, “So. You're writing a paper on the same topic as Reece, are you?”

Hogg's eyes snapped up at that and met Pagan's in the rear-view mirror. 

“Why do you say that?” 

Pagan shrugged. “Looks as if you were in a terrible hurry to clear out the library,” he said. “Are you going around to all of them, then? And are you really going to read all of those books?”

Tony snorted. He had known Hogg since they were boys, and the observation was apt. He was clever, Hogg, but a bit of a dilletette. An intellectual lightweight.

“It looks like academic sabotage,” Pagan concluded.

There was a pause.

Then Pagan added, “You really oughtn’t to have ruined his tires, you know.”

Hogg looked affronted. “Whose tires? Why would I do such a thing?” 

“You've a bit of mud on your shoes. It’s just like the mud outside of Reece’s building. Not like you to go about so poorly turned out, is it?”

Hogg’s rounded face drew into a scowl. 

“Oh. Well. That's me found out then, isn’t it, _Inspector Morse?”_ he said, his last two words dripping heavy with sarcasm.

Pagan shrugged. 

“Well, are you going to say anything?” 

Pagan shrugged again. 

Hogg opened his mouth to say more, when, there, in the falling darkness, the heavy autumn air was rent by a sudden blast of feminine screams.

Pagan threw the cart into park at once and swung his long legs out of the open side, ready to investigate the source of all the fuss. 

It was difficult to tell what they were were on about: the screams seemed half-terrified, half-punctuated with laughter. But then, who could possibly hope to understand what dramatics a house full of girls might whip up, all for want of something better to do?

Well. Nothing else for it.

Tony hopped out of the cart and followed, while Hogg called out after them.

“Are you just going to drop me here, mid-journey?”

But Pagan ignored him and continued on, opening the heavy green painted door to the brick building as if he had every right to march right in.

Inside, the place was a pandemonium of excited shrieks and shouts, breathless and terrified, a veritable funhouse of feminine hysteria.

Susan, no doubt the ringleader of the circus, darted out onto the landing at the sound of the heavy door slamming behind them. 

“Pagan!” she called. “Can you come up here? There’s a mouse!”

Delighted shrieks followed this announcement. The girls weren’t all that frightened, then. Just as Tony had suspected, it was all for effect.

Pagan bounded up the stairs, then, inspiring more excitable shrieks.

A man in the girls’ territory, oh my! 

Susan all but batted her eyelashes as Pagan passed, but as soon as he moved down the hall, her wide-eyed mask fell, and she looked upon Tony as if the sight of him bored her senseless.

“Oh. Hello, Tony,” she said.

"Susan," Tony replied, rounding the corner. 

In one of the rooms upstairs, the source of the excitement was easily spotted. Two of the girls were standing on one of the beds as a small creature zoomed about at their feet, much like a wind-up toy. The mouse was more alarmed at the racket generated by the girls, poor thing, then they were of it, and was trying to find some crack in the wall to scurry into, some means of escape. It sat up every now and then, as if holding its tiny paws up to them in supplication.

And who could blame it, really?

Pagan stepped toward it, taking a folder and a tea cup from the desk as he went, until the furry little fellow was backed up into a corner.

“Don’t kill it!” shrieked one of the girls.

Pagan turned around at that, a brief burst of offended annoyance flashing across his face, and then he proceeded to kneel slowly down. Slowly, slowly. For someone so lanky and coltish, he certainly did move with a surprising grace.

Carefully, Pagan lowered the cup over the mouse and then scooted the folder beneath, entrapping the small creature, and then he retraced his movements, almost forming a backwards arc, the muscles of his thighs and arse visibly flexing beneath his cheap black trousers as he rose to stand.

Then, amidst cheers and sighs, he went to carry the entire trap, mouse and all, outside.

Susan followed them. 

Of course, she did.

Once Pagan freed the mouse in the small grove of woods behind the building, she took his hand and leaned in, giving him a smacking kiss on the cheek.

“Our hero,” she said.

Pagan said nothing, only shrugged one bony shoulder, as a trace of delicate pink bloomed across his freckles and the bridge of his nose.

Tony clenched his hands by his side. For a moment, he almost forgot himself. For one breathless moment, Tony almost could not tamper down the urge to reach out and trace that hint of soft blush forming over the hard lines of his face with his fingertips.

Susan turned to go back inside, and for a moment, Pagan watched her, spellbound. Then, he went off on his way, back to the front of the building, back to where the golf cart was still waiting, leaving Tony one pace behind.

“Took your time,” Hogg complained, once they arrived back out onto the pavement.

But Pagan appeared not to have heard. Instead, he seemed to move as if entirely in a dream, and, as he started up the engine, he took his bottom lip between in his teeth in a way that made Tony have to look away.

Tony wasn’t sure what brought him here Friday night after Friday night.

God only knew he had other places he could be. 

**Author's Note:**

> Maybe it was a stretcher having those girls shriek over a mouse so, but I was trying to “Britishfy” a bit. At my school it would have been what they euphemistically call a “palmetto bug” and those girls would have every right to scream. Those things can fly! And honestly ought not to be allowed! But they don’t live in the UK (lucky you!) so I had to come up with something else!  
> I hope everyone is doing ok! <3


End file.
